Wanganui Collegiate School

Wanganui

About

Wanganui Collegiate School is an Anglican seven day boarding school situated in the Lower North Island in the West Coast town of Wanganui and is the second oldest school in the country.

The school has a role of 430 students from Year 9 to Year 13, of which 280 are boarders housed in four boy’s boarding houses and two girl’s boarding houses.

A school with a very strong sporting culture we offer a variety of winter and summer sports. Emphasis is largely on the team sport environment of which, rugby, cricket, rowing, netball, soccer and hockey play a significant part. Many successes have been achieved at both athletics and cross-country over a long period of time.

Wanganui Collegiate is lucky enough to offer wonderful facilities for all of its sports, including a number one rugby field that has over 100 years playing history, a wonderful equally old, cricket oval and pavilion and an excellent water based artificial hockey turf, plus the use of Cooks Garden for athletics.

Wanganui Collegiate boasts a 100 percent pupil participation in both a winter and summer sport. This along with many dedicated teachers a number of highly qualified and specialist sports coaches endeavour to offer an excellent environment for students to reach their sporting potential.

Collegiate offers rugby at all age levels U14, U15, U16, 2nd XV and 1st XV. All rugby teams, other than the 1st XV play, play in the Manawatu Rugby Union competition within their various age groups.

Wanganui Collegiate offers all its rugby players a highly structured environment in which to practice develop their skills and play the game and well supported by a strong parent based supporters club and a number of highly skilled coaches.

A school steeped in rugby tradition and one of the oldest in New Zealand ensures that the 1st XV has a number of longstanding traditional fixtures. Fixtures against schools such as Te Aute College, New Plymouth Boys High School, Christ’s College, Wellington College and Hato Paora, many of which have been played for over a century.

This strong traditional fixture list combined with the recently formed CNI Rugby competition, ensure that Collegiate offers its rugby players an excellent fixture list for aspiring young rugby players. This year Collegiate will take part in the 91st annual Quadrangular tournament – the oldest in New Zealand – between Wellington College, Nelson College, Christ’s College and Wanganui Collegiate. This three day tournament is a highlight for many of these rugby boys.

Guy Lennox Director of Rugby

Mr Guy Lennox appointed to new position with WCS Rugby. Guy is a WCS old boy and after a distinguished playing career of more than 100 games for Wanganui he created a career in coaching. He excelled as a coach steering the Wanganui senior men’s teams to Meads Cup honours. Guy has been involved in coaching at WCS before and we welcome him back and look forward to his valuable input into our rugby over the coming seasons.

Te Ahu Teki WCS Head Coach

After being an assistant in 2015 Te Ahu Teki takes over as Head Coach of 1st XV 2016. Te Ahu began his schoolboy coaching in 2007 at St Pats Silverstream. He worked his way through the grades becoming Assistant Coach 1st XV in 2010. This met with immediate success as Silverstream won the Wellington premier league and the NZ Super 8 competition that year. He then moved to Hastings Boys High for four years where he had three years coaching the 1st XV and also the Hawkes Bay Under 18s.

Aaron Chadwick WCS Assistant Coach

Aaron Chadwick started coaching Wanganui age group representive teams many years ago and moved to Scotland where his coaching really grew. He became Assistant Director of Rugby at Robert Gordons College where he coached and mentored some future Scottish under 20 Internationals. Upon returning to Wanganui he became Head of Rugby at City College and had immediate success with City winning the Division 1 Manawatu title. Their junior sides also met with considerable success under his guidance.

Both Te Ahu and Aaron have extensive rugby backgrounds which involved very successful playing careers. Both have enjoyed many years of club and representative rugby in both Wanganui and Manawatu.

2013 – 1st XV toured NSW, Australia, playing against Sydney based schools and clubs as well as school in Canberra; traditional fixture against New Plymouth Boys High School was played at the Yarrow Stadium, under lights, as a curtain-raiser to an ITM match